Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Carlson on Kloppenborg on Goodacre

Over on Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson offers some opening reflections on an article that John Kloppenborg wrote in response to my Case Against Q. It reminds me that I have still to write my own response to Kloppenborg's article and the delay in doing this says nothing about my opinion of Kloppenborg's piece -- I was hugely grateful to have the book taken so seriously by one of the experts in the field. The delay is rather to do with the fact that after a major project, one wants to move on to other pieces of research, at least for a short while, lest one gets bogged down in just one rarefied area of research. Stephen's post is here:

Stephen comments on nomenclature and puts his finger on the thing that concerns me with the term Kloppenborg now prefers for the Farrer Theory, "Mark Without Q": it defines someone else's theory by contrasting it with your own, i.e. by what is present (Marcan Priority) and what is absent (Q). Admittedly, I used this title for a while for my web site, as Kloppenborg points out. But my reason for dropping it was that it kept getting misunderstood by cursory users who would ask questions like "But I didn't think Mark had any Q in it anyway; isn't it Matthew and Luke who have Q". It was a strategic decision to try that term, to draw attention to the role played by Marcan Priority so as to contrast it with the Griesbach Theory, which also dispenses with Q but on very different grounds. I was also influenced by E. P. Sanders and M. Davies who used this term in their Studying the Synoptic Gospels. I am pleased, though, that Kloppenborg has dropped the term "Farrer-Goulder", which I think unduly draws attention to Goulder's particular take on the theory, which is convenient for some because it gives them grounds for attacking the theory that are not intrinsic to the theory. I like Stephen's suggested terms like "Mark-Matthew theory" but wonder if now adding yet a fresh designation will only end up with more confusion.

But on to the question of substance raised in Stephen's post, I think he centres in effectively on what to me is the most troubling (or encouraging) element in Kloppenborg's article:

Although Goodacre has presented an interesting case defending the possibility of Luke's direct dependence on Matthew, none of his arguments can be considered sufficiently weighty to displace the alternative scenario, which is at least as plausible, that Luke and Matthew independently drew on Q. (236)

What I found interesting about this statement was the assumption here that the two theories, Farrer and Two-Source, were effectively competing on a par. For given that one theory involves an additional, hypothetical document and one does not, I would have thought that the one that does not ought to be accorded priority. This is where I think that Occam's Razor genuinely has a role to play in Synoptic studies. Given that a good case can be made for Luke's use of Matthew, and given that entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary, then the Farrer theory should be preferred to the Two-Source Theory.

1 comment:

"This is where I think that Occam's Razor genuinely has a role to play in Synoptic studies. Given that a good case can be made for Luke's use of Matthew, and given that entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary, then the Farrer theory should be preferred to the Two-Source Theory."

However, the Farrer theory actually has two major unknown sources: the source for Mark and the source for Matthew's "Q" verses. There's a lot of material in Matthew not in Mark, which its writer had to get from somewhere.

Similarly, the two-source theory has two unknown sources (the source for Mark, and Q). So where does Occam's razor enter in?